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Thursday, June 29, 2017

Just War According To Catholic Teaching

The great Saint Augustine provided the basis of Catholic doctrine about just war.

Considering whether war is always bad or if there are circumstances when it can be just, he wrote:

According to the Gospel of Saint Luke, Saint John the
Baptist preached a baptism of penance inviting all to convert and
change their lives. People from all walks of life came to him and asked
what they must do to change. This precursor of Christ answered each
according to his circumstances. “And the soldiers also asked him,
saying: And what shall we do? And he said to them: Do violence to no
man; neither calumniate any man; and be content with your pay” (Luke
3:14).

Saint Augustine comments:

If the Christian Religion forbade war altogether,
those who sought salutary advice in the Gospel would rather have been
counseled to cast aside their arms, and to give up soldiering
altogether. On the contrary, they were told: ‘Do violence to no man . . .
and be content with your pay.’ If he commanded them to be content with
their pay, he did not forbid soldiering.1

Military life is therefore in itself perfectly legitimate. If the
military as a cause is legitimate, so also is the military’s end: to
wage war.
Nevertheless, the saint argues, there are Gospel precepts like
“resist no evil,” or “turn the other cheek,” that seem to condemn the
use of force and thus contradict the licitness of military life and
subsequently of war.
He replies to these objections by showing how these precepts apply to
the interior life and how one must be meek even when punishing another.
Based on this, Moses condemned the Jewish idolaters to death, not out
of personal hatred, but charity, thus preventing them from remaining in
sin.
In this way, Saint Augustine’s teaching concludes that evils arising
from military life and not military life itself is forbidden: “non prohibet militia, sed malitia.”
According to the holy bishop of Hippo, just war must seek to obtain
or restore peace, and in this sense, it is an instrument of peace. By
peace he understands the tranquility of order, the right disposition of
things according to their proper end.
Saint Augustine also defines just war as a means to re-establish and
vindicate violated justice, and thus obtain peace. Therefore one can
wage war to punish a nation for the violation of just order.
Nevertheless, in the Augustinian concept of justice, this applies not
only to the natural law of individuals and peoples, but also justice due
to God as sovereign and lord. Thus both the systematic violation of
natural law or the denial of the right worship of God can be motives for
just war.
Likewise, just war was ordered by God Himself in many episodes
narrated in the Old Testament. On the other hand, just war can also be
waged against a country that refuses to punish adequately its own
citizens who acted unjustly against an offended nation.
In other words, according to Saint Augustine, just war can be waged
when recovering goods or legitimate situations or when restoring order
and justice violated by a people.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Saint Bernard, the great troubadour of Our Lady, the meek mellifluous
Church Doctor, was also a great orator and preacher of the Crusades, He
was the official preacher of the Second Crusade.
In his famous Opusculum, “De laude novae militae” (“In
Praise of the New Knighthood”), Saint Bernard addressed the Knights
Templars — using Saint Augustine’s arguments on the famous reply of
Saint John the Baptist to the soldiers — he wrote:

What then? If it is never permissible for a Christian to
strike with the sword, why did the Savior’s precursor bid the soldiers
to be content with their pay, and not rather forbid them to follow this
calling?
I do not mean to say that the pagans are to be slaughtered when there
is any other way to prevent them from harassing and persecuting the
faithful, but only that it now seems better to destroy them than that
the rod of sinners be lifted over the lot of the just, and the righteous
perhaps put forth their hands unto iniquity.2

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

St. Thomas Aquinas pictured with a flaming sword pointed at the devil who lays defeated under St. Thomas’ feet.

This greatest of all Church Doctors developed and completed the doctrine of just war in several aspects.
Quoting Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas returned to Saint John the
Baptist’s argument favoring the legitimacy of military life and,
therefore, of war and added many other points.
He introduced the concept of common good as a basic element for the licitness of war.
The military profession must have as its goal defending the public
good, the poor and oppressed, the cult due to God, and the Church.
Soldiers are therefore instruments of legitimate authority which
prevents or punishes, even with death, the misdeeds of criminals.
Quoting the sermons of Saint Gregory the Great, he justified capital
punishment as a means to avenge outraged justice, correct and instill
fear in evil, and thus re-establish and guarantee both the peace of
society and the Church and a nation’s stability and prosperity. Such
actions are virtuous when motivated by the love of justice and charity.
For soldiers to fight in just wars, the saint explained, supernatural
or divine help, which are the Virtues, is needed. The first such virtue
is fortitude, a supernatural help that makes man more courageous and
perseverant in the fight.
Bellicose action, he added, can only be performed with wisdom and
ability, when done with prudence, which directs man’s actions in life
with rectitude.

Francisco de Vitoria, OP

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas there are three conditions for just war:

1) It must be declared by legitimate authority. Saint Paul says: “He
beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, an avenger to
execute wrath upon him that doth evil” (Rm. 13:4).
2) The cause must be just. He quotes Saint Augustine: “A just war is
wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state
has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs
inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.”
3) It must be waged with good intention. “For it may happen that the
war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and
yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine
says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): ‘The passion for inflicting harm, the
cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the
fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are
rightly condemned in war.’”3

Subsequent Doctors

Theologians after Saint Thomas like Francisco de Vitoria (1485-1546)
and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) completed the Scholastic theory of just
war with the principle of proportionality:
Besides a just cause, a summons by legitimate authority, and a right
intention, these theologians teach there must be a balance between the
good to be recovered or preserved, the unjust situation to be remedied
or prevented, and the evils that necessarily come in the wake of war,
particularly the number of deaths.
All peaceful means must be exhausted before having recourse to war.
These theologians point out that the need for justification applies
only to offensive not defensive war, since the principle of legitimate
defense in the face of an attack is evident.

Francisco Suárez, S.J.

Doctrine of the Popes

The above-mentioned doctrine of the Fathers, Doctors of the Church
and theologians, was accepted and incorporated in the Magisterium of the
Church as taught by the popes over the centuries.
Under the general title “Just War at the Service of the Divine
Precept of Peace,” the Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, France, succinctly
summarized the teaching of the popes on just war:

Order and peace can have recourse to force. However,
force, in itself, is incapable of restoring peace, since peace is the
fruit of the union of justice and charity.
Some enemies of justice cannot be led to accept the necessary conditions for peace without the use of force.
The importance of a certain good justifies entirely its defense by
force against an unjust aggression. The Catholic Faith must be included
as a most precious good. It is therefore legitimate to defend the Faith
with the use of arms.4

One of the Pontifical documents referred by the Monks of Solesmes, is
the Allocution to the Military Committee of the American Congress, by
Pius XII, on October the 8th, 1947:

Law and order may at times have need of the strong arm of
force. Some enemies of justice can be brought to terms only by force.
But force should be held always in check by law and order and be
exercised only in their defense. Nor is any man law into himself.5

More recent Popes have insisted on the principle of proportionality
and the means to employ in the defense or recovery of a material or
moral good. However, the fundamental principles were already expounded
by the great doctors and popes over the centuries.

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St. Bernard:

Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!

How secure, I say, is life when death is anticipated without fear; or rather when it is desired with feeling and embraced with reverence! How holy and secure this knighthood and how entirely free of the double risk run by those men who fight not for Christ! Whenever you go forth, O worldly warrior, you must fear lest the bodily death of your foe should mean your own spiritual death, or lest perhaps your body and soul together should be slain by him.

Indeed, danger or victory for a Christian depends on the dispositions of his heart and not on the fortunes of war. If he fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil; and likewise the results can never be considered good if the reason were evil and the intentions perverse. If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you perchance kill a man, you live a murderer. Now it will not do to be a murderer, living or dead, victorious or vanquished. What an unhappy victory--to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you!

But what of those who kill neither in the heat of revenge nor in the swelling of pride, but simply in order to save themselves? Even this sort of victory I would not call good, since bodily death is really a lesser evil than spiritual death. The soul need not die when the body does. No, it is the soul which sins that shall die.

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port.

Once he finds himself in the thick of battle, this knight sets aside his previous gentleness, as if to say, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord; am I not disgusted with your enemies?" These men at once fall violently upon the foe, regarding them as so many sheep. No matter how outnumbered they are, they never regard these as fierce barbarians or as awe-inspiring hordes. Nor do they presume on their own strength, but trust in the Lord of armies to grant them the victory.

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Saint Athanasius

"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith?The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ..."You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. "Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."